A man passes the Prince International Plaza in Phnom Penh on October 15, 2025. Photo by Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images.
As stated by CNN
Chen Zhi, 37, known as a young magnate with a youthful face, has risen to the upper echelons of Cambodia’s power circles: he funds scholarships and leads philanthropic programs, while also running one of the country’s largest and most powerful companies.
According to American investigators, Chen Zhi runs one of the largest transnational criminal networks in Asia – an empire built on forced labor and cryptocurrency fraud, which previously brought him and his associates up to $30 million a day.
Money flowed toward acquiring Picasso works, private jets, and real estate in London’s upscale districts, as well as to bribing officials, according to New York prosecutors who last week announced the seizure of $15 billion worth of cryptocurrency linked to Chen as part of a multi-year investigation.
According to investigators, his empire serves as a front for more than 100 shell companies used to launder money across 12 countries and territories from Singapore to St. Kitts and Nevis.
Prince Group employs thousands of people and positions itself as one of Cambodia’s largest conglomerates: investing in luxury real estate, banking services, hotels, construction projects, a retail network, and even the watch industry.
Last week, the company was designated a transnational criminal organization, and Chen was indicted in New York on charges of money-laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit cryptocurrency fraud; as of now he is at large, and Cambodia has no extradition treaty with the United States.
Analysts estimate dozens of schemes operating in Cambodia involve thousands of people, and the country is becoming one of the centers of the global crypto-crime industry within the digital crime network.
According to GI-TOC experts, the investigation highlights the scale of the criminal web that ties together business, politics, and law enforcement across the region.
“It is truly remarkable in both scale and the amount seized, and in how effectively so many nodes of this criminal network were identified and targeted.”
Also noted are the erosion of civil society in Cambodia and the international community’s efforts to push back against criminal networks, notably through US and UK initiatives to tighten controls and hold those behind this fraud economy to account.
“Civil society in Cambodia has been crushed.”
“Now is not the time to slow down.”
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